- Courtney Alexander is a multimedia artist who has taken the tarot world to task.

Noticing the absence of people of color featured in tarot cards, she created a deck featuring people of color, and themes that speak to the Black Diaspora.

(bright gentle music) - I've been creative in my own way all of my life, but I never thought of myself as an artist, like someone who has something to say.

I didn't see myself in museums or doing paintings or anything like that.

When it was time for me to go to the University of South Florida, I decided to go into their Studio Fine Art Program.

Throughout my time at USF, like I transformed not just as an artist, but as a person.

I feel like my transformation as a person informed my transformation as an artist, and I realized that I had things to say, and I had things to share.

It made me want to start to kind of break down some of the experiences that I had, and understand my identity at these intersections of being fat, Black and queer.

(bright gentle music) With tarot, it was kind of like a little journey that I took baby steps in.

Last year, I was ready to finally purchase my own physical deck.

And so I did.

There were a lot of options out there, but none of them featured people who looked like me, and although I did find one deck that I felt comfortable with, I still wanted to have something that represented who I felt I am.

As a Black person who's raised in America, I don't have a lot of connections to traditional African practices, and so I was like, man, I would really love to have a deck that just was free.

It just represented the Diaspora, like it represented the multiple ways that Blackness can exist instead of just catering to one aspect of Blackness at one time, like, we are all these things at the same time.

I started off with the Death Card, of all cards, (laughs) and from there I just continued to find references that inspired me.

Like, I felt like Grace Jones represented a lot of the things that I wanted to bring into this project.

She's, to me, someone who's fierce, who's bold.

She's just unapologetic about all facets of herself, and she doesn't allow anyone to place her in a box.

And it just continued for me finding inspiration that even outside of Grace Jones, just looking at photos of, whether it was celebrities or people from different African countries.

So my inspiration has come from all different types of places the same way, like I said, Blackness is existing in all these facets.

I just was able to kind of find a way to pull all these different types of identities together the best way I could.

- I've been doing tarot Oracle readings for about four or five years now, and I have so much experience with trying out different layouts.

But when I laid my eyes on Dust the Onyx, oh my goodness.

It is...

When I'm looking at the pictures and I'm seeing Grace Jones and you see, like, it's amazing.

I've just never seen it before.

I've never seen it done like that before.

Ever.

- Representation is important.

Seeing people that look like me is important.

Having the history of tarot and knowing where it came from and knowing that I have roots in it and that my people have roots in it, and those being acknowledged when they're so often overlooked.

There are so many, you know, there's the classic tarot deck that everybody goes to that I'm not gonna name 'cause I'm sure everybody knows what it is.

And that has for so long been the standard.

And the problem with that being the standard is where am I in that deck?

So it's super important that here is a deck that has all of these representations that I can relate to.

Representations of women, representations of black women, representations of fat, black women.

That's all super important to me.

Representation matters.

Me being able to get grounded, me being able to resonate with somebody, me being able to give better readings.

I judge that's all a result of feeling very connected to my deck.

That's why this deck is so pivotal.

That's why this deck is so necessary.

(upbeat music) - With this work, I just started off on Bristol paper, which is a kind of thick, smooth white paper, and I spray painted it black.

I just started with drawing with pastel.

I would draw the portrait out, and then I had magazine clippings.

I had different types of, you know, specialty art papers, glitter, sand, puffy paint.

Like I just had all of these things around in my art studio that I had accumulated, and I just began grabbing those things, you know, and working with them.

- She put so much time and so much thought, and so much intuition and energy into every stroke that you see on these cards or every stroke of the brush.

It's incredible.

Courtney has really opened up a space for melanated people, people of the African diaspora, to feel at home, to feel connected truly to this deck and see themselves reflected in that.

And I feel like these images not only can serve as sources of healing, but inspiration.

(peaceful music) - I just really hope in the end that those who receive this tarot deck just really understand the amount of genuine love and genuine spiritual transformation, everything that I've experienced has gone into it.

It's living and it's breathing.

And that has its own intention for each and every person that receives it.

And I'm excited what this means for the tarot community.

I'm excited for what this means for the black community and for the art community.

(bright music) - [Host] To learn more about Courtney Alexander's work, visitdust2onyx.com.